Microseismic impulses as earthquake precursors

Records of the IRIS broadband stations in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Magadan, Yakutsk, Arti, and Obninsk obtained before the Kronotskii (Kamchatka Peninsula) M = 7.7 earthquake of December 5, 1997, and the Neftegorsk (Sakhalin Island) M = 7.0 earthquake of May 27, 1995, are investigated with the use of the Spectra Analyzer interactive program, designed for the analysis of properties of scalar time series. It is found that, 5 to 10 days before the shocks, stations nearest to the sources of these earthquakes recorded pulsed vibrations a few minutes long that were separated by intervals of a few tens of minutes. The shape asymmetry of the pulses characterized by different amplitudes of positive and negative polarity phases increased toward the earthquake onset time, as did the frequency and regularity of the pulse sequence. It is assumed that the nature of this phenomenon is related to self-organization properties of the seismic process in a metastable lithosphere and to the synchronization of vibrations in the inner and outer shells of the Earth, including chaotic and quasi-periodic components.